Pain bloomed bright behind his eyes, each heartbeat a scream of fire in his veins. The darkness started toswallow him. Even though Kaen’s last spell had ripped through his ribs like flame, hecould notfall. He knew she would not give up and would foolishly risk her life for his.
The shadows whispered to him."Let go,”they hissed, curling around his limbs like lovers, like chains. "She is gone now. Save yourself to save her kingdom."
Thorne’s breath came in ragged gasps. He closed his eyes and reached, through blood, through pain, for the bond that had once been a constant. He reached for Vornokh.
"Help me,"he whispered inwardly.
Vornokh’s voice cracked through his mind like stone splitting in winter. “Do not do this. You know the cost.”
“She’s gone.”
“If you reach for the dark magic, there will be no return. I will not follow you into that pit, Thorne."
His heart broke open. "Then don’t. Just let me go."
"NO!"The roar inside his skull made him gasp. "I will not lose you, too."
"She is everything,"Thorne breathed. "And if I burn to bring her back, then I burn."
Vornokh’s grief surged hot and wordless, a tremor of ancient love lost again.
Thorne felt it, the snap. Like the tear of silk. Like a heartbeat vanishing in silence. Her bond. Gone. His scream was silent. There was no voice left in him. Only the soundless shatter of something vital cracking inside his chest. He slammed his fists to the ground.
“No, Gods, please, not her,” he whispered, voice cracking, hollow. “Take me, not her.”
All the years he had trained. All the fights he had fought. All the power he’d carried. None of it had ever broken him like this. Not when his mother cried in her tower. Not when soldiers screamed on the field. Not even when he’d touched shadow for the first time, but this, this was losing the only thing that ever burned bright enough to find him in the dark. He remembered her laugh, sharp and defiant on their first day. The way she used to challenge him in training, eyes flashing like flint. He remembered her trembling breath when he first kissed her, the tremor in her fingers when she reached for him beneath the stars. He remembered the night she fell asleep in his arms, and he whispered, "I would burn the world before I’d let you fall."
He had failed. Then silence.Thorne let go.The shadows surged at his call. He didn’t fight them. Heembracedthem.As he reached into the rift between life and death, he gave himself to the dark to save her.It cost him everything.His body collapsed, lifeless.His world ruptured.He felt her go. His soul tore open with a howl that never made it to his lips. Vornokh’s roar echoed it, a dragon's scream of agony and denial.
“No,” Thorne gasped, crawling forward to her lifeless body through smoke and ruin. “Please. Please, I gave you what you asked in return for me to save her,” he told the Dark Master.
Thorne reached for her. For the flicker. For warmth.But she wasn’t there. She wasdead. His heart became a grave.His breath hitched, and his hands shook. He tasted blood, dust, and sorrow. And in that silence,he screamed.The kind of scream that rips from bone. That defies language. That begs the Gods to unmake the world. "I can’t lose her."
The shadows surged again, and this time he tore them open with bare hands, reaching, clawing, sobbing into the void. "Takeme," he begged. "Take me in her place,”Thorne screamed with pure desperation. He begged again to anyone or anything that would listen. “Take me, take all of it. Bring her back."
The darkness listened.It swallowed him and welcomed him.
Chapter
Seventy-One
Thaelyn lay on the ground, lifeless.Then, a breath returned with agony,with a thread of power sent down the bond from Nyxariel. Her eyes opened to fire and smoke blazing around her, and a deafening silence.
She searched for him through her blurred vision. Thorne. He still was unmoving, gone. His hands were burned black, and smoke was all around him.His chest was still, not rising from any breath. She reached for the bond to feel him, feel anything. It was gone. She tried to talk through the bond to Vornokh to see if it was true. Nothing. She searched for Nyxarial.
She responded quietly and with a pained expression, "I'm sorry, Stormborn. He gave up everything, including himself, to save you. He is gone."
“No! Thorne!” she screamed, dragging herself to him. Her hands shook. Her magic sputtered. She clutched him, sobbing. “You can’t leave me. You can’t. Come back to me. Come back, ”
And then the Aether answered. It rose in her, uncontrollable. Love and desperation ignited like the sun. Her hands glowed as she placed them on his chest.“Come back to me,” she screamed through tears.
The light erupted from her like a nova, flooding the field in a surge of Aether flame. Nyxariel screamed, wings flared. Time itself seemed to pause, held in the eye of her grief. The ground cracked beneath her. The air shimmered like water. Her hair lifted with raw power. Aether poured from her in currents of liquid starlight,wrapping his body in a cocoon of magic and memory. She gave it everything. Every ounce. Every thread of soul.
“Come back to me.”
The Aether burst from her like a star dying, like the universe screaming. The world held its breath.His body convulsed from the surge of the magic pouring into him, but still nothing.
The Aether's magic to resurrect him back to this world was too late. He was already gone. His body lay still. Unmoving.
